Foreign ministers from each European Union member country, including Bulgaria’s Ivailo Kalfin, gathered in Brussels on March 5 at a European Council meeting.

The council approved a draft programme entitled Daphne III, aimed at preventing and combating violence against children, young people and women, and protecting victims and groups at risk.

The council provided for a financial envelope amounting to 116.85 million euro for the period 2007-2013. The text is being sent to the European Parliament (EP) for a second reading. The establishment of an instrument for the financing of community action in the field of civil protection was also approved, providing for a financial envelope of 189.8 million euro for the same period. The council also decided to not accept all the European Parliament’s second reading amendments to a draft regulation concerning the EU’s financial instrument for the environment, Life+.

Life+ is aimed at providing support for measures and projects with European added value for the implementation, updating and development of community environmental policy and legislation, the council’s website wrote.

The council’s meeting on March 5 was good preparation for the European Summit held in Brussels on March 8 to 9.

The first day of the summit was dominated by discussions of climate change and energy. EP President Hans-Gert Pottering cited a recent opinion poll saying that 90 per cent of citizens were concerned about climate change. He also urged EU action to safeguard energy supplies, the EP website said on March 9. Moreover, Pottering called on EU leaders to retain the substance of the Constitutional Treaty in the Declaration on the Future of Europe on March 25 in Berlin.

“Our biggest asset is our people,” he said. Among his main concerns were demographic trends. “Of the 30 states in the world with declining populations, 15 are in Europe,” Pottering said. In addition to the subject of demographic change, he spoke of the need to improve the workings of the internal market because certain barriers were still in place, notably in transport, energy, financial services and telecommunications, the EP website said. Pottering told the summit that there was a need to make European law more “transparent and comprehensible”. He wanted to see simplified and reduced legislation that would “benefit people and the environment”. A way to achieve this, according to Pottering, was by reducing bureaucracy and using the principle of subsidiarity more frequently, meaning that law be made as close to the public as possible.

He also spoke of an “implementation deficit” and called for better transposition, proper implementation and enforcement of EU law. A cost-effective EU-wide patent could be one step in this direction, Pottering said, as quoted by the EP’s website. He said the failure to put reforms into place was hindering the attainment of Lisbon Strategy aims and called their acceleration “a matter of urgency”.

As to another of the main priorities at the summit discussion, worries of climate change, it was announced that a UN poll showed that nine out of 10 people were concerned about the matter. The report said that “the years between 1995 and 2006 were among the 12 hottest since 1850”. Temperatures are already warming up and “a further temperature rise of more than 5°C is a real possibility”, Pottering said. He reminded EU leaders a reduction of 2°C is feasible and economically affordable, if concrete and binding targets were agreed on. World leaders must accept that there was no space for excuses any more and action was needed now, he said. Pottering insisted on Europe becoming a “low-CO2 economy”.

Finding alternative energy sources was also among the topics of discussion. Pottering said the “safeguarding of energy supplies for the EU as a whole” is an important aspect of the partnership and cooperation agreement between the EU and Russia. He called for energy policy to be integrated into the European Neighbourhood Policy (which governs relations with the EU’s neighbours). He told EU leaders that “the best way to safeguard our energy supplies is to establish a link between measures to foster economic development and democracy”.

During the summit’s first day on March 8, EU leaders agreed to cut CO2 emissions by 20 per cent from 1990 levels, by 2020. Member states have also agreed to set a 10 per cent minimum target on the use of bio fuels in transport by 2020.

But poorer Eastern European countries, such as Bulgaria, which are more dependent on heavy industry and carbon-heavy coal, had argued they would struggle to make the investment in wind farms and solar power necessary to meet binding targets, BBC reported. Their fears were, however, eased as the statement on renewable energy sources allows for flexibility in how each country contributes to the overall target of the EU. “Differentiated national overall targets” for renewables would be set, “with due regard to a fair and adequate allocation taking account of different national starting points”, the text said.